Monday 15th July 2019, 2.40pm (day 2,881)
There is something statuesque about this jackdaw, I think. Like he’s posing and ready to launch a discus like an ancient Greek athlete. Perhaps that is why I have gone monochrome for the day.
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Category Archives: Flora/Fauna
Frond
Sunday 14th July 2019, 5.10pm (day 2,880)
Very little happened today — nor will happen for the next couple of days, so let’s see what can be done with the creative juices. This shot comes from my playing with the zoom lens in the garden. Would it be better without the second plant in the background? I like the juxtaposition of the two.
Joe ponders the gardening
Monday 1st July 2019, 3.55pm (day 2,867)
Joe finished his GCSE exams a couple of weeks ago and so now, like all the UK’s 15-16 year olds, has an extended summer holiday, interrupted only insofar as his parents nag him to do things to get him out of the house. Attending part of the annual allotment summer tidy up (July is inspection month) didn’t seem to enthuse him much though. But the redcurrants are ready to eat (all six of them).
The meerkat watches (the anniversary celebrations)
Saturday 29th June 2019, 11.40am (day 2,865)
On 2nd July 1999 Clare and I were married at the Ashton Memorial in Lancaster, and today we were back there with some friends and family for a 20th anniversary reunion, which was small-scale, informal and a great deal of fun. It was excellent to just hang out with the people we’re still in touch with and see how things have changed — or not — across those two decades. “20 years eh? Blimey” was the general conversational tone of the day, but that was fine.
But although I do try to make these blog pix more-or-less representative of the day… Look! it’s a meerkat watching us! And meerkats are not the usual fauna you expect to see, not in Lancaster on a Saturday morning anyway. But there it was, in the small zoo that is up on the top of the hill by the Memorial. So though I agonised briefly about this choice, sorry, but the meerkat wins. Too cute by half.
Foxglove season
Friday 28th June 2019, 5.05pm (day 2,864)
A warm and sunny day, too warm really to be out yomping another ten miles over the Lake District, but I think I survived it. The foxgloves were certainly relishing it. Pictured on the descent of Steel Fell, which is up there to the right, and above the valley of Greenburn Bottom (a name, which if unpicked, could result in all sorts of images).
The turquoise bug
Thursday 27th June 2019, 5.45pm (day 2,863)
The sun appears to have arrived in Hebden Bridge, bringing with it the bugs. But whatever bugs actually are, most of them in a British summer are not usually turquoise, with orange legs.
Not a spider
Thursday 20th June 2019, 10.40am (day 2,856)
Working at home this morning, this thing starts crawling up the wall with its extraordinarily long legs. Imagine translating those legs to human size, they’d be thirty feet tall, you’d be one of the tripods from War of the Worlds. But seeing as it only has six of them — a spider this is not….
Doing its best
Saturday 15th June 2019, 10.55am (day 2,851)
Despite the lack of encouraging conditions, some of the foliage is giving it a go. It can’t be easy under the monsoon, probably our equivalent of crawling out from under the duvet at 6.30am in February. Hence the ragged look of this bloom.
Pinks and purples
Thursday 13th June 2019, 11.45am (day 2,849)
It’s not been the most exciting of weeks and local flowers and walls are about the limit of my ambitions for a time. Summer colours perhaps, but no summer weather: the monsoon remains clamped overhead with few signs of it shifting just yet.
Being 42 